Northern Mineral's Browns Range project on the WA/NT border is rich in the valuable magnet minerals, the company says.

supplied: Northern Minerals

A handful of Australian companies are angling to enter the global rare earths market, with hopes of becoming strategic suppliers of key elements in the production of electric and hybrid cars, smartphones and wind turbines.

It's a market where China controls over 90 per cent of supply and just one company outside of China is successfully producing rare earths.

In addition, the past couple of years have seen prices fluctuate wildly as China exerted control over the market through now-abolished export quotas.

The path to production for small Australian rare earths players is littered with the failed attempts of those that have tried and failed to turn a profit.

Despite all of this, predictions of an upswing in the production of electric and hybrid vehicles, and confidence in the quality of their dirt, have some Australian companies confident they can break into the market at some point in the future.

The 17 chemical elements that make up the rare earths group are, in fact, fairly commonly found, although not often in quantities that are worth extracting.

And not all rare earths are valued equally, some are almost worthless, while the 'magnet metals', neodymium, praseodymium and dysprosium, are what Australian companies call the 'sweet spot', the ones that could make them the most money.